WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 01: Activists participate in a rally to support Planned Parenthood March 1, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Planned Parenthood held a 'We Are Planned Parenthood Capitol Takeover Day' to lobby legislators not to defund the organization. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Alex Wong

On Monday, the New York Timesbroke the story that the White House had offered to keep Planned Parenthood's $500 million federal funding — if the organization stopped providing abortions.

Planned Parenthood reportedly refused the proposal on principle. "Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept," explained Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, to the New York Times. "Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is nonnegotiable."

In a comment to the Times, President Donald Trump defended his desire to defund Planned Parenthood. “As I said throughout the campaign, I am pro-life and I am deeply committed to investing in women’s health and plan to significantly increase federal funding in support of nonabortion services such as cancer screenings,” he argued. “Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion, even those who identify as pro-choice. There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women’s health, while not providing abortion services.”

However, a recent poll from Quinnipiac University found that 62% of voters don't want to see the organization federally defunded, which directly contradicts Trump's claim. Additionally, the Hyde Amendment, which went into effect in 1976, makes it illegal for federal funding offered through Medicaid (a healthcare program for socioeconomically disadvantaged people) to go towards providing abortion services. Thus, defunding Planned Parenthood doesn't directly affect the number of abortion procedures done through the organization; instead, it impacts the "nonabortion services" Trump claims to support. Those services and procedures include STD testing, sex education, birth control options, cancer screenings, pregnancy tests, breast exams and more. (According to Planned Parenthood, only 3% of their funding (and none of their federal funding) goes towards providing abortion services; the other 97% goes to other services.) Defunding the organization altogether means potentially preventing care for the nearly 5 million people they treat annually — healthcare that is not always as readily available or easily accessible as a Planned Parenthood facility. (Planned Parenthood has 650 locations in the United States alone.)

So then why is the White House trying to negotiate with Planned Parenthood? The New York Timesreported that Trump's administration is worried about the optics of defunding it altogether, especially given the larger issues Republicans are having with agreeing on an Obamacare replacement plan. Moreover, there are questions for Trump and his administration when it comes to his conservative base's views versus those of the general public; for example, in that same Quinnipiac study, 63% of Republican supported defunding the Planned Parenthood, while only 7% of Democrats and 31% of independents did.